Dr Michelle O'Driscoll: Marking your young child's milestones... the pros and cons

HAVE they walked yet? Are they crawling? Any sign of her reading? Wow, still no teeth?!

An easy conversation point or casual chat topic is a child’s development. But this can lead to parental anxiety, and a fear a child is not where they should be in one or more areas.

Have you ever typed something into the internet search bar, and as you scroll down through the results, you can see the titles have turned purple rather than blue, becuase you’ve read all of these pages already? This is how you know you’re overthinking something!

And developmental milestones are something that are searched for online by parents often, in the hopes of finding the official ranges, the prodigy cases, and the worrying stories of where lack of progression indicated something more serious.

As a parent, particularly a first-time parent, there can be a huge pressure felt in relation to milestones, both in terms of physical development and cognitive progression. Seeing a friend’s child run across the room when yours at the same age is still sitting contentedly on their bottom. Or hearing another child chat and laugh and giggle in strange company, while yours is clung like a koala, afraid to peep out from behind your shoulder.

It’s natural to compare, to wonder whether you should be doing more to support them, or are you missing something in your parenting toolkit? 

Is it your fault that your child isn’t around the 50% percentile for weight or height, and is it due to the choices you’ve made for them?

Every child is different

Just as no two adults are the same in their strengths and abilities, neither are our children. Development can be affected by many things including genes, birth experience, health, physical envrironment, and child personality preferences in the case of social development.

Expecting all children to hit milestones at the same time is not realistic. Some will be stubbornly slow in trying any new skill, while others seem to glide through the different aspects of development without any difficulty.

It’s a range, not a strict target

Linked to this idea of no two children being the same, developmental milestone ages tend to be given as a range rather than a strict target. 

Knowing that your child falls into that range is reassuring, as it confirms that there are others who are at that stage also within the population.

Even delays may be nothing

It may end up being that the expected age range or target range comes and goes, and this is where most parents begin to get worried. Rest assured that, even beyond the range, it usually happens that a little more time is all that’s needed, and your little one is breaking the mould with no adverse outcomes.

Check to rule out, or catch early

As much as we’d love for all late blooming to not be due to an underlying issue, it can also rarely be that missing these milestones is indeed for a particular reason that needs identification, in order to support and address it. If, by the time the upper end of the range comes and goes, there’s still no progress on something, it’s best to involve the doctor or public health nurse or another service that’s relevant at this stage.

Getting the ball rolling early means that by the time you’re referred, either your child will have found their way and caught up, or that you’ll have a timely chance to diagnose, treat and/or support where it’s appropriate.

Early intervention is key for any potential issues that might be underlying, so being proactive even if we’re nervous and worried, is the best approach. Chances are all will be considered fine, and if not then you’re ahead of the game of referral.

Developmental milestones are an approximate range, to be used to reassure yourself of variation, and to flag when further steps might be warranted.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Michelle O’Driscoll is a pharmacist, re searcher and founder of InTuition, a health and wellness education company. Her research lies in the area of mental health education, and through InTuition she delivers health promotion workshops to corporate and academic organisations nationally.